


A Kind of Magic

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, Female Characters, Female Dwarf, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Friendship, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morrigan never expected to find, or to desire, a friend at all, and especially not in the person of one of the last two Grey Wardens in Ferelden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kind of Magic

The first thing Morrigan noticed about her is, of course, that she was a dwarf, and a woman.  The second was that she stepped forward while the men around her hung back, her eyes bright and curious, but wary, that she left one hand near the long daggers on her back but stood braced and ready, with one foot forward, her features curious rather than hostile.  She grinned, quick and sharp as one of those daggers, when Morrigan mentioned turning people into toads, and Morrigan distinctly remembered thinking that perhaps these blundering fools were not a complete waste of her time at the sight of that smile.

  
She was leading them back through the Wilds to their camp, a stinking midden of men and dogs that Morrigan could smell leagues off even in her own shape rather than that of a wolf, when the dwarf woman caught up to her, despite the two strides she had to take for every one of Morrigan’s.  “So,” said the dwarf woman, without preamble or introduction.  “Are you one of those mages?”

  
“No introduction,” Morrigan replied bitingly, for she had no real wish to converse with these interlopers, “is this not considered rude amongst your people?”

  
“T’be totally honest, _I’m_ pretty much considered rude amongst my people, salroka,” the dwarf said with a rough laugh.  “But it’s Brosca.”

  
“And no other?” Morrigan asked.  “So paltry in the name department are you.”

  
“Just Morrigan, huh?” Brosca said.

  
Morrigan frowned.  She had not expected that quick of a response.  “Oh, but I am a fearful Witch of the Wilds,” she said.  “Have you not heard?  A single name with which to terrorize our victims is all we require.”

  
“’I’m Natia,” Brosca said.  “But I gotta say, I usually use just the one for terrorizing myself.”

  
Morrigan surprised herself when she laughed, just a snort of amusement, quickly buried, but still, a laugh. 

  
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the stupid knight stumbling too loudly through rotten logs and the fool Alistair muttering something under his breath, the sounds of the night around them, before Natia Brosca said, “So are you?  A mage, I mean?  Since you’re, yanno, a witch and all.”

  
“I can,” Morrigan said distinctly, “touch the Fade, to manipulate the power in the world around us into spells.  But if you mean to inquire if I am a tool of the Chantry, bound by religion and a templar leash, than no, I am not.”

  
“So you can do magic,” Brosca said, but her eyes flicked up to Morrigan, and she wondered if she had imagined their wide, wondering glance before the dwarf’s gaze was back on the path before her and unreadable as flint.  “What’s that like?”

  
“As I have always possessed the ability, ‘tis much like breathing,” Morrigan said.  “Cease your pointless questions.”

  
Brosca snorted back a laugh of her own.  “Ain’t you polite,” she said.  “Right.  Gotcha.”  But she walked alongside Morrigan all the way back to the camp, not slowing, however Morrigan tried to lose her with her longer strides.

  
She was, Morrigan allowed, an interesting woman.  The only good thing about traveling alongside the two remaining Grey Wardens in Ferelden and, soon enough, the smelly beast they called a dog, was that Morrigan doubted she would find Natia Brosca a boring companion.  Unlike with the fool Alistair, there seemed to be some value in getting to know her better.

  
Morrigan was not disappointed in her first impressions.  Alistair continued to be a fool, the dog continued to be a smelly beast that Brosca called Nug when she was feeling charitable and Nug-Humper when she wasn’t despite the exceedingly unfortunate mental image it conjured, and Brosca continued to be quick, surprising, rough, crude, and . . . interesting.  One of the most interesting individuals Morrigan had met—not that she had met so very many, and very few of them interesting.

  
The dwarf’s soft side surprised her, first witnessed when Brosca grinned at the bandits who accosted them on the road, took their coin, and let them go, nudging Alistair in the ribs as she hefted the purse afterward.  At first it disgusted Morrigan—did Brosca have to mediate _every_ dispute in Lothering, truly?  Why did she give away their meager supplies of coin to weaklings who would suffer and die, no doubt, no matter what her generosity—but then it began to strike her as odd more than anything else, thought it was still frustrating.  It began to intrigue her, for how had Brosca managed to survive the life she had led, that she described before becoming a Grey Warden, with this streak of softness in her?

  
And Brosca was sharp, good-humored, canny, mischievous, easygoing in a way that won friends, which seemed like a waste of time to Morrigan.  Alistair would have followed the dwarf anywhere inside of a week.  Nug was equally devoted, despite the insults Brosca good-naturedly rained upon him.  Even the qunari and the Chantry sister seemed willing to follow her, to respect her.

  
Morrigan wondered how Brosca did it and, more importantly, why she bothered.  And why she came so often to sit by Morrigan’s campsite, away from the others, her friends, and ask her questions about her life, experiences, opinions, dark eyes alight with interest as she leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees or chin in her hand to listen.  Brosca told Morrigan about crime in Orzammar, and how to smuggle lyrium, about her own mother in response to Morrigan’s tales of hers.

  
She was surprised to discover that she felt something akin to . . . pity when Brosca described bringing her mother a bottle of wine just so she could sleep.  “I knew it weren’t no good for her,” Brosca whispered, looking into the flames, “but it made her happy.  I ain’t never done that on my own.”

  
Morrigan did not like the sharp ache of fellow feeling that settled behind her breastbone.  “I did not intend to pry,” she said.  She felt awkward and despised it.

  
Brosca glared at her, jumped to her feet with her fists clenched.  “And I don’t need your sodding pity, duster,” she spat, and stormed away.

  
They did not speak again, not at Morrigan’s fire, for weeks, and Morrigan was shocked to realize how fiercely she missed the conversations.  It was after Redcliffe, and the absolute debacle that ensued involving the walking dead, while they were on their way to the Circle Tower because Brosca wanted to give the soft-handed nug-licking noble-born brat a chance (her words, not Morrigan’s, though she found them amusing nonetheless), that Morrigan realized that she respected Brosca, just as the others did.  She wouldn’t follow her so blindly as they, of course, but respect—it was a strange, almost dizzying feeling.

  
Brosca came to Morrigan’s campfire again the night after they left Redcliffe.  She seemed . . . oddly hesitant, almost shy.  She hung back for a moment, around the edges of the light cast by the fire, turned around and set her hands on her hips and took a deep breath, before she walked into the light and rapped her knuckles softly against the nearby tree.  “Mind company?” she asked, and looked away, into the fire, crossed her arms across her chest.

  
“Typically, I mind company a great deal,” Morrigan said.  “But, as ‘tis you, I feel I might make an exception.”

  
Brosca grinned and threw herself down on a nearby log.  “That’s a relief, salroka, you don’t know much,” she said, then looked down, scuffing one booted foot against the ground.  “Sorry about the other day.  I shouldn’t have blown up at you like some kinda lyrium keg.  That was stupid.”

  
“It was,” Morrigan agreed.  But that didn’t mean she didn’t understand, she thought unwillingly.

  
Brosca laughed.  “You ain’t never pulled your punches,” she said amiably.  “Or your fireballs, I guess.”

  
“I prefer ice,” Morrigan said.

  
“You got that right,” Brosca agreed, and something in her tone made Morrigan look at her again.  What did she mean by that?  But before she could examine it, Brosca was looking down at her hands and speaking again.  “This magic thing,” she said.  She stopped, swallowed.  She looked almost nervous.  Morrigan had never seen her look like that before.  “Goin’ into the . . . uh, the Fade?  That’s it?  To fight this demon.  Do you think it’s gonna work?  Do we even got a chance?”

  
“A chance, perhaps,” Morrigan allowed, slowly, thinking.  The plan still seemed foolhardy to her, reckless.  But certainly possible.

  
And to think of it, to match wits with a demon.  The notion was . . . intoxicating.

  
“If you say so,” Brosca sighed, “I guess I’ll assume it’s not totally sodding insane.”

  
“Oh, it’s certainly insane,” Morrigan said.

  
Brosca grimaced.  “Ray of sunshine, you are, duster,” she said, “thanks a lot.”

  
“I do my best,” Morrigan said in her sweetest tone, then gave Brosca another look.  She had her hands braced on her thighs and was scowling into Morrigan’s fire like she intended to challenge it to battle.  “What is it?” she asked before she could convince herself not to bother with the question.

  
“Magic,” Brosca sighed.  “I don’t _get_ it.”  She slanted a look at Morrigan out of the corner or her gaze, and her mouth drew down oddly into a little frown Morrigan had never seen on her before.  “It’s so,” she said, and bit her lip.  
  


“So?” Morrigan prompted.

  
“Ah, fuck it,” Brosca said, shaking her head.  She pushed herself to her feet.  “Thanks for the talk, Morrigan.  I appreciated it.”  
  
  
And before she knew it, Morrigan found herself on her feet as well.  “No,” she said.  “Don’t . . . don’t go just yet.  I . . . have something to show you.”

  
Brosca hesitated, paused in mid-movement, then swung back around.  “All right,” she said.  “Let’s see it, then.”

  
Morrigan took a deep breath and called the magic to her hands, then reached forward and took Brosca’s in her own, still glowing.  Brosca jerked back, her eyes widening, but she didn’t wrench away.  Morrigan turned her palms over, curled her own fingers around Brosca’s smaller ones.  Her fingers were strong and stubby, her palms callused and hard, the shape of her hands round and her skin brown against Morrigan’s long fingers and pale skin.  She let the magic dance between them, power pour into Brosca until her eyes were wide again, the pupils dilated, and she knew she could feel it.

  
She let her hands drop.  “There,” she said, and she knew she was wild-eyed and exultant from the power still rippling through her.  “That is what magic feels like.  Is that not glorious?”  
  


Brosca stared at her a moment longer, and then she blinked and started to grin.  “Damn,” she said.  “You ain’t kidding.”  She looked down at her hands, scarred and callused, and flexed them, thoughtfully.  “So when we get to this tower place, we’ll be surrounded by people who can . . . can do that?”  
  


Morrigan looked at her carefully.  “There are a great many uses for magic,” she said.  “But you need fear none of them with a strong will and the ability to hold to who you truly are.”  
  


Brosca sighed.  “Yeah?” she said.  “But who am I?”  
  


She was so many things.  She was brave, and reckless, and laughing, and foolishly compassionate.  She was strong and determined, stubborn and willful, brash and crude and hard.  Morrigan respected her.  
  


More than that, she _liked_ her, she realized.  
  


What a fool she was, she thought with frustration.  But she had to say something.  Brosca was still looking at her, that unfamiliar uncertainty in her eyes.

  
“’Tis a stupid question,” she said.  “You are Natia Brosca, a Grey Warden.  And . . . my friend.”  She didn’t want to sound uncertain when she said that.

  
But it was worth it for the way Brosca smiled.

  
“Yeah,” she said.  “Guess I am.”


End file.
